Boy Alone
by Jeiq
Summary: After Spike leaves the Red Dragons, Shin and Julia conspire to watch him; Lin isolates himself to keep them safe, and is thus, alone. EDIT: Epilogue.
1. Hey Boy Hey Girl

_ The continuing saga of Lin (and of Shin. That boy is rather cool) in the absence of both Spike and Vicious. Can no one find happiness when I write about them? Yes. The white-eyed girl is inspired by memories of the 'agent' from Wong Kar-Wai's _Fallen Angels_ (remember how goofy-cute Kaneshiro was over her, and how much she was pining for Leon Lai?) and also by Rei Toei, the virtual celebrity in William Gibson's _Idoru_ and _All Tomorrow's Parties_. Gibson kicks booty like there's no tomorrow. _

  
**

Boy Alone :: 1 Hey Boy Hey Girl 

**

This is the corner where they used to sit when they were tired of playing pool, or when a friend of Vicious-sama's came in and wanted to play against him. This is where the lamplight shone yellow on her hair and picked out the odd colours in his eyes, where the shadows hid the hands that were clasped together beneath the counter of the bar. But the boy who sits in this corner has put aside all memories of those times, even though they are only about a year old, and so they cannot affect him. 

People come and go. He doesn't know all of them. There is a girl who is becoming familiar, who sits in this corner, too; together they make a poor ghost of a non-existant couple, as though someone has badly traced over the outlines of Spike and Julia, distorted the memory into him and this girl. 

He sits here, in this place where the memories hurt the most, so that he will get used to it and then he will not feel the hurt so much. Perhaps the girl, too, has her own memories that she is trying to render numb. She looks at him, her eyelashes curiously white and thick over narrow eyes; sees the tall glass in his hand, his fingers wet from the condensation on its sides. He is clean-cut, fresh-faced, his black hair slicked back into funky spikes. Green eyes are vacant, specks in the iris glowing gold from lamplight. Beside the pool table there is one who looks like him, who shoots fast and hard and celebrates when he wins with a cigarette in mouth, a short glass in hand. It is warm inside the bar, and through the diamond panes of glass that hang in the window she cannot see through the frost that clings thick and crystal-perfect to the panes. 

"Hey boy," she says. 

He starts, turns, he looks at her as though she was never there, as though she had not been sitting next to him all this time. 

"You're supposed to say, 'hey girl'," she tells him. "It's a song. Haven't you heard it?" 

"No." 

She is not good at speaking to strangers, and neither is he; after a while, during which there is a great discomfort and the pool-players heckle loudly over a greatly disputed shot, he takes a drink from his glass, and things fall back into the way they were before she spoke - him staring at random, undefined objects in the distance, her looking at the patterns his fingers leave around the glass. He tries to remember ways of speaking to women, but he cannot think of anyone that he knows who has had a healthy male-female relationship, and is forced to remain silent and awkward until she speaks again. 

"What's your name?" 

"Lin." 

He expects her to give him her name, but she says nothing, lifts her head to look at the progress of the pool game. He notices for the first time that she has black hair cut ragged across her shoulders, limbs willow-white and chopstick-thin; her mouth is a heavy line loaded with a weight of words unsaid, thoughts not expressed. He tries not to look at her eyes; they confuse him even more, so that he is totally unsure of what will happen, and wishes to simply walk out, although he knows that is the last thing he must do. Perhaps, he thinks, she is waiting for me to ask her name. But I do not wish to know her name. 

"Is that your brother?" 

"Shin." 

"Why does he do that to his hair?" 

Lin shrugs. The silence returns, and they are separated again by it, absence of words walling one person off from the other. But now he is aware of her, uncomfortably no longer alone. Why is she here, how did she invade his space? Who is she? She is not a Red Dragon. The Dragons are almost obsessively male; some have wives, daughters, lovers, but none are, themselves, women. Spike used to call it an abomination. Spike liked women; they are gentler, Spike said, kinder, softer. And yet they can also be sharper, more cruel, their cuts deeper. Lin knows what he means. No man could have shaken the friendship Spike had with Vicious, but it only took one woman... 

He thinks of those days when he used to follow Spike on business meetings, when he was Spike's bodyguard and backup; the main memory he has of those days are of the stale smoke and tired dust of motel rooms and offices, the tension of being in a room with the deal still not yet made concrete and everyone's finger poised over the trigger of their guns. Now he drifts, mainly unutilised and ignored. Spike, they say, is dead, and he does not want to hope that Spike might be alive. The memory of the green-haired man brings as much pain to Lin as it does happiness; Spike is the only thing that Lin has ever betrayed the Red Dragon for. 

"You sit here every night," the girl says. "Aren't you a little young to get nostalgic?" 

"There are too many people over there." 

"But there's me here." 

"I don't mind you." 

She bites on the end of a cigarette. Her teeth are the perfect white of cosmetic bleach, her lips painted ice-pale. Lin feels that she has gotten what she wants, at least enough for tonight; he finishes his drink, takes his coat and, subtle as mist disappearing in sunlight, leaves. Shin looks after him, sees the girl, sees him leaving, is obviously annoyed at him for going away so early, but is too deep in the crowd by the pool table to go after him. The girl drops her cigarette, unlit and unsmoked, onto the floor, crushes it under the toe of a high-heeled boot; stares at Shin, but is unable to find what she is looking for in him, and then she, too, leaves. 

"Don't touch the table!" Shin shouts at his friends; he slips through them, the crowd and the haze of cigarette smoke, runs out into the street, cue still in hand. She hears him running, pauses to look over her shoulder. He cannot think of anything to say. 

"You..." 

"What?" 

"Julia." 

"Sorry," she says, "wrong name." 

But he feels her hand graze his coat as she turns to walk away. He knows that snagged onto the rough fabric of his coat there is now a wafer of silicon, perhaps no longer than his little fingernail; he looks down, picks it off his coat, looks at it. It is shaped like a pin and it is thin enough, when he tries, to fit into one of the holes he has pierced into his ear; that, he decides, is the safest place for it. It must be safe; he must not lose it, and no one must know that he has it, nor can they know what it is. 

Shin rubs his eyes, pushes his stiff, sharp-ended fringe back from his forehead. He feels uneasy, alcohol and nicotine suddenly sour in his mouth. Wonders who she is. Where Julia found her. How they are related. He thinks of the invisible strings that bind them, Julia to him and to Lin, to the girl with her eyelashes a white fence over her eyes. And there is a string from Julia to Vicious and also to Spike, and between Spike and Vicious, Spike to Lin, Lin to Vicious, all of them, the strings too thin to be seen but always there, their touch cruel. The past, Shin thinks, is a hideous thing, when it stays around haunting the present. 

"Lin. Oi. Lin." 

"What is it?" 

The twins have moved into the same flat, an uneasy truce called after they realised how far apart they have drifted. Shin was always a little bit jealous that he never made it under Spike's wing; perhaps that was why it was difficult for the brothers to speak when there was still Spike around, and Lin working for him. There was also the time when Shin was Julia's bodyguard, and for that time Julia was to Shin something like what Spike was to Lin. Now there is just the Red Dragon, with Julia and Spike no longer around, and Vicious off somewhere fighting a strange war on a strange planet. Shin has no one else, and, for all the distance between them, is strangely, fiercely loyal to his brother. 

"You left so early. You'll never get any fun." 

"I was tired." 

Shin leaves the lights off; he knows his way around. He speaks to Lin as he stands in the hallway, voice thinned by passing through the door of Lin's bedroom. 

"Who was the girl?" 

"I don't know her name." 

"Never trust a woman," Shin says, grinning in the dark. "But it's all right. She wasn't all that beautiful." 

"No, she wasn't." 

"It's been a long time since there was a woman and a man sitting in that corner where you were today," Shin says, his tone light. He is half lost inside the shirt that he is taking off when he hears the doorknob click; he fumbles with the fabric, loses, fights again, manages to get it off. Stands aloof and alert, watching as Lin walks out of the room, half-asleep, but with a thought on his mind that shows in the way that he holds himself. 

"I think I should tell you," Lin says. "That if you know where she is - don't tell me." 

"Why not?" Shin asks. The back of his throat feels terribly dry. 

"If I know where she is, I'll go after her, and I'll bring her back. I have been ordered to, and it is so. But if I don't know where she is, I don't have to do anything. So don't tell me." 

"Fine," Shin says. "You're the big brother." 

When Lin has turned around and gone back to sleep, he forgets to close his door. Shin listens, waits for the sound of breathing to slow down and deepen until it is regular, the smooth and deep breathing of sleep. Shin sits down on the floor of the living room, his arms still tangled in the shirt he has not yet fully gotten off. And thinks: if I am the younger one, then why do I feel so old? 

In the corner where they used to sit now linger the memory-ghosts of Spike and Julia, doomed, with love. A girl with white eyelashes and black hair lank on her shoulders tilts her head, looks at a boy whose head is always turned away. In Lin's dreams, that he cannot remember when he wakes up, there forms a linear link between him and her, based on the link that he remembers between Spike and Julia. He needs the link. He has cut himself off from Shin, and all other luminous figures have left him. Out of a memory he fabricates an affection, and it lies patient in his subconcious, waiting for the night to pull him back to that corner in the pool room, waiting for the girl with her sad mouth and white-lined eyes to walk into the room again. He is not in love with her, but is willing to believe that he is. 


	2. First Love

_ Sorry for the long delay: had to program an oscilloscope, am now preparing for lab presentation and radio design. Wheee. I am, irrationally, rather in love with this Utada Hikaru song, despite not understanding most of it. So much so that I forgot to write in present tense as usual. Oh, buggerit. The song does sound lovely on piano. And about yao char kwai (fried dough sticks) I don't know if this is available on Mars, but it is in Hong Kong, I think - it definitely is in Malaysia - and it is GOOD. _

  
**

Boy Alone :: 2 First Love 

**

She changed her name, cut her hair, dyed it black. Wore her coat a different colour, took off her sunglasses and threw them into the sea as she drove over the bridges, that day. When he went away she wanted to go away as well, only she knew that his death was temporary. But even then, she wanted to die, too. Temporarily. 

So she went away, too, and she told herself, I'm becoming someone else. Just for a while. Because while he's away from me, he's not being himself, either. Or even if he is - he's a different person. I can't be Julia without him. So I'll be someone else. I'll call myself a lot of names, move around. One day he'll find me, and I'll be Julia again. 

She didn't like to go out, now. When it was raining she would put on a waterproof coat and walk in the streets because then it was unlikely that someone would look at her - people don't look at each other, when it's raining - and it was safer than walking at night. When she needed food, money, things from outside, the girl ran errands for her. The girl was quiet and never asked questions; friend of a friend, small-sized and frail-boned. She called the girl Mei. Xiao Mei. Little sister. She'd always wanted a little sister. Someone to look after. 

It was raining now and she wanted to go out, but it was getting dark and she didn't like the idea of Mei sitting in the house alone after dark. In the streets outside the lamplights were coming on and the hawker stalls along the main street, at the end of the road, were filling up with people willing to huddle underneath the colourful red-blue-white umbrellas and wait for a sizzling hot plate of fried noodles, a bowl of wan-tan-mee, an oil-crispy pair of yao char kwai. She wanted to go out, get something hot for Mei when the girl came back. There was a great guilt on her, now; she knew why Mei was late, and she knew that if it was not for her, Mei would be back by now, and they would both go out to stand beneath the hawkers' colourful umbrellas waiting for their take-away, smiling at vaguely familiar neighbours' faces peeking out from underneath the other umbrellas. 

Umbrella. 

There was one, now, moving down the street. Mei hadn't gone out with an umbrella, and there was also the bulkier shape of someone else there, someone bigger and broader but still tall and slim. Spike-shaped. Everything, if she was in the mood, seemed Spike-shaped, Spike-scented, Spike-touched - the people, the cigarettes, the streets, the flowers. A boy, tall and slim, that's who it is, she said to herself. You had your boy; Mei has hers. But you sent her to speak to _that_ boy - is that him, then? Is that why he brings back these memories of Spike? 

She ran, then; ran to the door of the apartment, stopped there, her hand on the door. There are two boys, she said to herself. Leaning against the wood of the door, she said their names, familiar names strange now on her tongue because she had not called them for so long. Shin. Lin. Shin. Lin. Shin would help her. He had sworn it. She'd seen the light in his eyes, felt his almost filial love for her in the last hug he had thrown around her arms, seen his grief in his downcast eyes when she had told him she was leaving and he had to stay. And he had respected Spike, who probably would not remember him, now; Spike, who had loved the other boy, Lin, perhaps as much as she had loved her little Shin. 

Shin. Lin. 

She wanted it to be Shin, who was there. It probably was. Shin would want to see her again, would like to know that she was all right. He would know that she, too, wanted to see him again. 

The main door opened, creaking so badly she could hear it right through the front door of the apartment. Footsteps, then, up the stairwell. She knew that if she guessed wrongly, she would have to find another way out of the building, and after that, another way out of the country, perhaps off the planet itself. But she didn't want to move. The world, she thought, doesn't revolve around you. Maybe Mei does have a boy, and he's a gentleman who doesn't want his girl to walk home alone. 

"You should get dry, quickly." 

"I'm fine. Thanks. You didn't have to walk so far with me." 

"It is nothing." 

"You can come up, if you want." 

"Do you want me to?" 

"Do you want to?" 

She prayed so hard and long that the voice she heard was _his_ voice, that Shin had just become a little stiff, a little more polite in his way of speaking. In the silence that followed, she knew it could not be Shin, that Shin would never speak to an even vaguely attractive girl so awkwardly. Shin always knew what to say, and with him there were no silences of this sort. But she felt, oddly, even more disappointed on Mei's behalf. You want him to come up, she said to Mei, trying to let the words reach through the wood of the door, down the single flight of stairs, mouth moving without sound; you'd like him to. Tell him. Forget that he will probably try to kill me if he knows who I am. If you think that much of him - tell him. 

But Mei, she forgets, is almost as awkward as Lin, and is only made bold by the fact that he has walked this far with her. 

"If you don't come up, where are you going to go?" 

"I will go - home." 

"So would you rather go home, than come up?" 

"I think I will come up." 

She could not move away from the door, because she thought there was no need to. She had forgotten her own fear, her own connection to Lin; she wanted Lin to connect, now, to Mei. Because it is evident that Mei wants this connection, and it is evident that Lin has nothing against it, except that he is totally unaware of what to do. Perhaps he is even aware of what it is. Perhaps he is not even capable of it. She wants to run Vicious's katana through the man's thin body, since he is the only person she can think of to blame for this; she cannot blame Spike. 

I should blame Spike, she thought. When he went away, he hadn't finished teaching Lin, yet. It was like a tug-of-war with Spike on one end and the Red Dragon on the other, and Spike, when he went away, let go. I went away and that didn't hurt Shin because Shin, bless him, Shin could take care of himself. Shin knew his own heart. But Lin is different from his brother, and Lin perhaps needed a little more guidance and perhaps a little more care, and Spike wasn't there to give it. So why blame Spike? If you knew it, and you didn't tell Spike to stay a little longer, why blame Spike? 

She cried into the door, and her tears flowed without sound. But there were footsteps now, closer and closer, and she pulled away, ready to run, out of the window, down the fire escape, into the rain; she was not sure now if she was running from the death that he had been ordered to bring upon her, or the mistake that she let Spike make. A terrible mistake to make, a beautiful boy with green eyes and a smile that the world will probably never see again, except as a mirror image in the teeth of his twin. Footsteps stopping, outside the door. 

"Are you coming in, then?" 

Pause. 

"I think I'll go home, now." 

The air seemed silent now, peaceful. She lifted her head. In the door there was a peep-hole the size of a thimble, and she put her eye to it. 

Watched as Mei leaned up to drop a kiss on the boy's white cheek. 

"Thank you," he said. His hair was wet and a few straggly locks flopped down over his forehead. Behind the door, she took her face away from the peep-hole and walked away, into her room, where she shut the door. The front door did not open until five minutes later. 

"He wasn't there today," Mei said. 

"That's all right. It'll take him time to scan everything." 

Mei did not ask her what it was that she wanted Shin to look for. Instead, the girl turned on the radio, flipped through a few channels, and then turned it off. 

"Isn't there anything worth listening to, then?" 

"No," Mei said, "just a bunch of soppy love songs." 

But in the morning, when the woman who was living in place of Julia woke up, she heard Mei singing, soft in between the sound of doors closing and the taps running and the kettle boiling, and there were words that made her feel a premature, undefinable sense of regret for something that had not yet happened: 

_ You will always be inside my heart Itsumo anata dake no basho ga aru kara I hope that I have a place in your heart too... _

* * *

_*ahem* That wasn't supposed to happen, and I have to remember to hide my obsession with Jay Chou songs, etc, from my boyfriend, who will doubtless crow with triumph at having inducted me into the Soppy Love Songs mentality. The next song I quote will have to be from The Verve (who played some good shiznit) or Moby (blues, man. blues). To preserve my hide. And pride._


	3. Distorted / Delayed But Identical Shape

_ This is turning into a Gibson fanfic. Ohno. Apologies for long delay. Had a radio to design, circuits to steal, reports to cut and paste... Here lies a conversation with Mao Yenrai and Shin. I'm aware that this story appears to be about everone else _except_ for Lin. This will be remedied. Soon. Along with the dreadful condition of the story's plot. And the dodgy chapter titles too. _

  
**

Boy Alone :: 3 Distorted / Delayed But Identical Shape 

**

If the wood and polish of a bar-counter could see and feel, think and analyze, it would conclude that time had caught itself in a loop somehow. A pattern has emerged, the details different but the shape of movement and incident familiar. 

"What were you gossiping about?" Mao Yenrai asks one of his bodyguards, smiling at the man, who fidgets with his fingers and looks at his feet. "It can't be about me, I know I'm not able to create juicy enough stories. Come now, what is it that turns my men into housewives at the marketplace?" 

That night, Mao Yenrai walks into the bar where his men go when they are off duty, is jovial and friendly, buys everyone a round of drinks. But he sits down after the initial fuss is over, does not talk to his senior officers who crowd around him, leery of strangers and shadows. He has forgotten his eyeglasses, but he can see well enough to know who it is in the 'quiet corner' - that place where the air is still and the light dim, too far from the bar to call the bartenders easily - unpopular, for these reasons, with the usual fun-loving hard-drinking youths who frequent the place. 

"Cold tonight," one of his men says, seeing him shiver. He is not aware of the chill running through him, but when the man mentions it, he realises, feels even colder. 

Across the room, he sees how Lin glances over at the girl, thin black fabric of her dress clinging to arms that emerge white and pale from the ends of too-long sleeves; how Lin takes up the jacket that he has taken off and hung on the empty seat beside him, to put it around her shoulders. She looks at Lin, but says nothing; all she can do, it seems, is look, since Lin will never say anything. Look, hoping that perhaps he will look back. When he does her face is touched with a light painful to see, especially when he next looks away, leaving her waiting for him to turn towards her again. 

"What do they do?" he asks of the bartender, who is, sometimes, a waiter during the lavish banquets that the Red Dragons hold. "Every night, they are here?" 

"When Lin's here, she usually is, too." 

"So..." 

"Don't know." 

"They talk?" 

"Not really. Once. Are you his mentor, Mao-san?" 

"No," Mao Yenrai says. "But they are all my responsibility. And I do not like to let the same mistake happen twice." 

She is a normal girl. Sources say she has an office job, in advertising; she lives with a friend, visits her parents, pays her bills with almost mechanical punctuality. Mao Yenrai accepts this information. Still he cannot truly say why he feels that something infinitely fragile is threatened by her presence in the bar. 

************ 

"Hello, Shin." 

"Mao-san. You wish to speak to me?" 

"How are you? How is your brother?" 

"We are well. Thank you, Mao-san." 

"You have quite a reputation for being a moderately successful ladies' man, do you know? Quite an achievement at your age." 

"If you do not approve of my actions, Mao-san--" 

"Oh, you can have your fun." Mao Yenrai does not even have to look at the fading photograph, framed and hung on his wall amidst glossier and newer prints, to remember the days when he was Shin's age. "It doesn't seem to affect your loyalty or your performance. You only live twice, I heard a man say - once for yourself, and once for your dreams. It's better if you live your dreams for real. And, who knows? You might end up actually marrying one of those girls and living happily ever after." 

"Yes, Mao-san." 

"What about your brother? I don't hear much about him." 

"Lin is being wasted. He is only doing bits and pieces, being passed around -- He can do a lot more. He is really very dedicated to the Red Dragons. He should be at least allocated an active supervisor, a new mentor. He can learn a lot more, Mao-san." 

When was the last time so much energy and insistence and _youth_ glowed in this office, brighter and warmer than the cold light falling through the floor-to-ceiling glass of the windows? 

"I agree with you," Mao Yenrai says. "The elders, and others, agree that Lin is a very worthy Dragon. That is why they are not assigning him to some other mentor. The best people in our syndicate - they are not with us, now. But one day, Vicious will return, from Titan. And until then, it is best that Lin does not become used to the habits and training of another mentor." 

Shin opens his mouth to speak, cannot think of anything to say. Words try to leave his throat, regardless; he chokes on them, feels ridiculous, falls silent. By his side his hands are in fists, and over his eyes his brow is furious, pulled taunt. But he cannot speak of this frustration he feels, nor can he explain how impossible it is for Lin to serve Vicious. Vicious, whose actions banished (and now threaten) Julia, drove Spike to madness and half-death and flight. Besides, Shin cannot speak against Vicious. Even more so, he cannot stab an absent man in the back with foolish, furious words. He subsides, and relaxes, and he is left with a washed-out regret that he thinks he can see, mirrored, in Mao Yenrai's tired face. 

"Now," Mao says, and he tries to smile again, "tell me about your brother. Don't you introduce any girls to him? I'm sure you have plenty left over." 

Shin laughs. "I don't know. We don't have the same taste, I think. Like his girlfriend now. I think she's his girlfriend." 

"He has a girlfriend? You've met the girl?" 

"Yeah." 

"I heard a story from the boy in the bar..." 

"The other guys don't get it. _I_ don't get it. But I think she's his girlfriend. They just don't do what everyone else does... that's all... that's... it." Shin bites lower lip to stop himself spilling further, not knowing if what he is saying makes any sense, if his guesses are correct. Say only what you know. What do you know? "She's there when he is, and he doesn't stay away from her." 

"Would you?" 

"I know I wouldn't keep going back..." 

Mao Yenrai lets Shin leave his office. Watching the boy stride out, tall and strong and lean with all the promise of the world in the proud back-thrust of shoulders and lift of sharp chin, he is reminded of his other proteges, and he finds himself hoping that Shin will walk down one path, preceded by a crooked-smiled, green-haired boy, and avoid the others, those that have ended in dishonourable death, suicide, crime or treason. There is only one other path left to walk, and Mao Yenrai has only the strength to tolerate one Vicious in his entire lifetime. 

But even the path that Spike, and others like him, took, even that path is not safe from death and danger... 

Mao Yenrai has neither the time nor resources to watch the twins and the girl, and so he lets it be. He hopes that the past does not repeat itself. It is not likely to; Shin shows no interest, and the passion that Spike and Vicious felt for Julia seems to be oddly lacking in Lin. Still, it is impossible to think back to that quiet corner without feeling cold. The pattern has been distorted; the girl is in love with the boy, the boy perhaps in equal love with the girl, and the other boy a separate entity, moving in a different world and caring only for the welfare of his brother. But the pattern seems to inhabit the same sphere - the corner of a bar, smoke and alcohol, the unlikeliness of a happy ending. He sighs, sags into his chair. 

Why are there no happy endings for those who deserve them? 


	4. My Descent Into Madness

_ I have realised that the main problem is that I have merrily deceived myself into believing this story has a plot. Perhaps from the next bit onwards there will be a plot. At any rate there is only much dialogue and drama in this bit. 'My Descent Into Madness' is by the Eels. It is really good. Really. _

  
**

Boy Alone :: 4 My Descent Into Madness 

**

Shin wanders for a long time, ending up in the graveyard where joggers saunter merrily along the paths, the dead perhaps turning and tossing in their slumber at the sound of so many sneakered feet. In the distance the sounds of traffic seem far away, as though from another world; overhead the sky rumbles, clouds belly-heavy with rain, tongues of lightning flickering tentative along the horizon. There is Spike's grave, fresh flowers on the stone. There is Lin. Shin feels himself crumbling. 

"Lin," he calls, walking towards the grave. 

Lin turns his head, features familiar slanted towards Shin, but the face has gone cold. Shin stops in his tracks. 

"Lin..." 

"Are you going to tell me something?" 

It takes a long time for Shin to react, to bring his head up and down in a single jerky nod. He has come to stop perhaps three yards away from his brother, a respectful enough distance, but Lin seems to speak to him through acres of space and time, voice and emotion freeze-dried by the distance. 

"Is it something I can repeat without fear, if the Van ask me to repeat what you are going to say?" 

"_Lin_..." 

Lin walks away. His feet make no sound on the grass, and there is only the faint rustle of the longer weeds as the ends of his trousers push past them; his coat is draped over his arm, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up and tie undone. But even in a state of untidy dress, there is no sign of casualness in him. 

"Lin!" 

Shin runs after him. The path, thick with stones, hurts his feet through his thin-soled street shoes; he catches his toe in a rut, stumbles, trips, crashes down, rises again, runs with a blood-rash on his palms until he catches Lin by the shoulder and spins him around. 

"Can't we just play a game? Just a game?" Shin does not realise how close to crying he is until he feels a great difficulty in breathing; he swallows it, forces air through his mouth down into his lungs. The graveyard smells sweet, white petals of jasmine blooming in between the bushes, magnolia trees spilling faint scent from their boughs; Shin smells his own cologne, mixed with sweat, the heat rising from the ground, an unfamiliar scent of fabric softener, faint and clean-feeling, that must come from Lin's suit. Shin manages to grin, wryly. 

We share the same house, he thought, and I don't even know what my brother puts in his laundry. 

"What game?" Lin asks. 

"It's called 'What If'," Shin says. "Here. I'll give you an example. What If... it started to rain fish? Lots and lots of fish? Smelly and scaly and really hard? And you didn't have an umbrella?" 

Lin looks at him. 

"It's just a game. It's supposed to be silly." 

"If it began to rain fish," Lin says, slowly, the muscles of his body relaxing so that Shin releases his shoulder, "I would run to the nearest place where there was shelter." 

"Yeah, well, what if I decided to run _away_ from shelter?" 

"Why?" 

"What If, remember?" 

"I would go after you and drag you to shelter." 

"Cool. You're getting it. You want to play some more? Let's play, huh? We haven't played a game in ages." 

"All right." 

"Okay. Here goes. What If..." 

_say it say it say it say it_

"What if Spike was alive..." 

_go on go on go on go on_

"... and Julia and I could find him..." 

_don't go don't go don't turn away not yet not yet_

"... and I could run away from the Red Dragon and you could run away too and we could both go find Julia together and the three of us could go find Spike and we could all just go find somewhere really nice to live Lin _please_ it's just a game _Lin_!" 

He runs, again, puts himself in front of Lin so that they both come to a halt, face to identical face. 

"I don't want to play. We're not kids any more." 

"You're still my brother." 

"I know," Lin says. "I know. But don't let that stop you." 

"What?" 

"I said, don't let that stop you. If you're going to play What If, for real... don't stop just because I don't want to play." 

"I won't play if you won't play. You are my _brother_." 

"Shin... Think about it like this." 

Lin pauses, licks his lips that have gone dry. The wind is growing bolder and stronger, licking moisture off skin, lifting locks of hair off foreheads. 

"I am your brother. And I want you to be happy. Doing things that make you happy. You, in turn, want the same for me. If what you plan to do is going to make you happy, you should go ahead with it. And you should not worry for me. Being a Red Dragon is what I want. And I am already a Red Dragon. So you see - you never have to worry about me, at all." 

"What if--" 

"I'm not playing. I can't. I don't think I can afford to be a child any more." Lin steps around Shin, the argument ended, but even he is unsatisfied with his reply; he stops a few paces away, and now they stand back to back, the emotional distance in between them as small as it will ever be. "Make sure you get a decent roommate to share the apartment. Don't make too much trouble. Take care of yourself." 

"You too," Shin says. 

Footsteps, now, on the brittle concrete of the walkway. Lin is moving away. Shin does not want to turn around, but in the end, he does. At the end of the path, where the gate is propped open, he sees her, thin in a grey coat over today's black dress, leaning against the fence; Lin walks past her as though she is not there, and she leaves the fence, follows him as close and silent as a shadow. Shin wants to shout to her, to tell her to take good care of Lin, but the sky splits open with a roar of rain. 

He walks further into the open, but no one comes to drag him towards shelter. 


	5. Quiet Times And Dark Places

_ We begin anew with an experimental chapter. I'm sorry for the long delay, I just finished exams and now I need to clean up my room and move back across the world. I'm also sorry for the weird flow and chop of dialogue and narration in this chapter, my brain has gone on hiatus for a while, too much stress, also possibly too much James Joyce. I don't know if this is the end. I think there's at least a couple more chapters to explain what happens between this chapter and when Lin first appears in Bebop as Vicious's right-hand man in __Jupiter Jazz_. Thanks for reading, see you. 

  
**

Boy Alone :: 5 Quiet Times And Dark Places 

**

_+ outside the leaves are falling from tree branches and we step into them + we are calm and quiet and hold hands (but we do not look at each other) + an old woman smiles at us from her bench beneath the white-flowered tree + he is quiet + he is beautiful + he has never been so near before but now there is a feeling of going away + he will not speak + why? +_

_You were angry with your brother._

He does not understand. 

_What is there to understand?_

That he cannot trust me. 

_You would not betray him._

If he gave me reason to and if it was in the best interest of the organization then I would betray him. If it was my duty to hurt him then I would hurt him. But he can simply give me no reason to do so, and it will be all right. 

+ we are fallen silent now + perhaps in awe of the beauty that we are walking in + how sweet the pink glow on your cheeks + how soft the fall of your hair + 

I want it to be all right for everyone. 

_A month ago you did not know if you could care at all._

It has been a month. 

_Have you decided?_

Decided? 

_To care._

Yes. 

_Good. So now you will care. And we will survive._

Yes. To survive. That is a problem. If we are to survive we must be careful and quiet and never show how much we care. We must be like the others, only we shall pretend that we are each too busy with our duties to leave each other. We shall be a bond that exists because it is socially desirable. 

_You have a leaf in your hair._

It is a small thing. 

_Let me take it off. There._

+ we stop and a hand touches the stiff strands of hair and a leaf goes spiralling through the air again + her hand is translucent and I can almost see the light shining through it + how can it be that things that seem so solid are so transient + that they can vanish + can be hurt + can be killed + that must not happen + not this time + even though the love that exists now may be a small thing compared to the love that existed in the past + we are two different people + we are not THEM + not HIM and not HER + the circumstances are different + we will survive + but still there is always doubt + else how could THEY end in such a tragic way? + there was HIS best friend + and now be careful not to think of HIS best friend + but impossible not to think of Spike + who once meant so much to everyone + who meant so much to me + 

We must be careful and not repeat the mistakes that were made in the past. 

_What mistakes were there?_

There was a man who fell in love with a woman, and everyone knew this, and also that she loved him back. Everyone knew, and they did not realise this until it was too late. It became too easy for someone to hurt one of them by hurting the other. It is possible that someone will one day want to hurt me, or to hurt HIM, and I must protect HIM. It is possible that they will hurt you, to hurt me. And that must not happen. 

_It will not happen. We will be careful._

_+ but it is painful to think that for all of this life he will never really know how strong this feeling is + this ache that comes with pride and joy when I look at him and see how green his eyes and how sharp the slice of cheekbone laid by a fine hand symmetric and perfect in his face + yes + his face that is always turned towards the organization + always the organization + but sometimes he turns towards me + and that is enough +_

+ but it is painful to think that this might be what HE felt for HER and what Spike felt for HER as well + that I have finally understood perhaps what it is and why it would make Spike do what he did + but that she will not know it + perhaps it can be spoken in quiet times and dark places when we are the only two people in a time and a place who are looking and listening + yes + when the organization is not demanding + perhaps there will be a time and place for that + 

_What are you thinking of now, Lin?_

Oh. Nothing. 

_Who was the man who fell in love with the woman?_

A good man. 

_He was in the organization?_

Yes. But that is past now. In the past I used to believe that I would die if he wanted it of me, even if it was against the organization's wishes. I think it is a crazy thing now. I think the organization is greater than any one man, now, and if I had a chance, I would not think, ever, that I would die for him, any more. 

_Don't die at all._

I may have to. 

_Then I will make sure you do not._

I am afraid that I will have to ask you to do something harder than that. 

+ we have reached the end of the park and there is the city before us and it is a terrible place and a beautiful sight (like so many things) and no one knows that we care so much more than is visible + 

If I die you must forget me. No, don't lift your hand, don't say anything. I must know this. Even if I was a normal person with a normal job I must know that your life will not end with mine. 

_But what is there left, if you are gone?_

You can find it. Promise me that you will look for it. 

_Only if you will promise me the same._

Ah... 

_You see?_

Then we are both doomed. 

_Possibly. And possibly we will be all right. Possibly you will become so important that they will make men guard you and obey you, instead of making you guard and obey HIM._

I do not ever wish to be like HIM. 

_You will never be like HIM. But you can be important as HIM._

No. 

_What if it would be good for the organization?_

Perhaps then. 

_Isn't it time you got back to it, then?_

To what? 

_The organization._

There is still time left. 

_There is not much._

You can go if you have to. 

_Then I will see you._

Yes. 

+ _and now there is a rift because he has said the wrong thing + the organization (always the organization!)_ + now we are no longer we but have become I and you and him and her + where I feel stupid because I know what my answer should have been + _where I am disappointed but I knew he would say that anyway_ + and we let go of each other's hands and at the end of the park she turns left (going to her office) and I turn right (going to my office) + _I wonders who it was he would die for_ + I wonder where is the man I once would die for + _we have misunderstood_ + we are apart now and alone + 

+ _and even though I am still angry with you for your answer_ + and even though I am angry with you for your question + _for this moment in life_ + for this moment in time + _I love you_ + I love you + 

**and that is perhaps the most important thing.**

* * *

HIM = Vicious   
HER = Julia   
_this format_ = Mei speaking   
this format = Lin speaking 


	6. This Is Love

_ The end. It's getting hard to find more to write about Lin. The transition between this chapter and the previous one is really really bad. Sorry. And no more Liga Italia for me until I recover from the wonderful treat of Totti's World Cup bum, thankee. _

  
**

Boy Alone :: 6 This Is Love 

**

_ Good-bye, good luck, struck the sun and the moon,   
To the fisherman lost on the land.   
He stands alone in the door of his home,   
With his long-legged heart in his hand._   
-- Dylan Thomas, _Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait_

One morning, sun slanting early between the slats of the vertical bamboo blinds at the window, he wakes up, and there is a face at his door, a voice in his ears. He stares up, focusing, green eyes sharp after a few seconds of sleep-blur; he touches the corner of his eyes, rubbing them as though to get the sand out of them. He has fallen asleep on the couch again, too tired to walk the extra ten paces to the bedroom; he wonders how he got back. He still smells of someone else's blood, of gunpowder and dried sweat and cobweb; for a minute he looks for Spike, wondering how badly either of them are hurt, then he remembers, and his face becomes a blank again. Where was he last night? He jerks up, looks immediately at the door. There is a pair of pink flats, another pair of flip-flops; those are always there. He lifts his head, scans the table; her bag is not on it. Behind the door: her coat is not there. Good. He sits up and yawns. 

"Always on the look out for your woman," Pagliacci says. He sits on the table and flashes a smile, thirty-two perfectly shaped white tombstones, at Lin. The Italian name is familiar now; the face handsome, features swarthy, hair black and thick and curly; he is the Azzuri answer to Spike, heavier-set, dreamier-eyed, with the same lazy, charming panache in style and movement. 

"She is not my _wife_." The words leave Lin's mouth naturally, rehearsed, as though without pain in them. "I don't care that much." 

Pagliacci shrugs. Lin and his girl are strange to him; there is apparently not much love lost between them, yet Lin does not truly look at any other woman even in her absence, while she does not respond even for a weak lapse of a second to the dazzling, exotic charm of Pagliacci and his brothers. There is a mystery here, Pagliacci thinks, but he has no wish to unravel it. 

"Papa awaits," he says. 

***** 

Papa is a huge wreck of a man, wrapped in the smooth black of a Sicilian-cut suit that seems to cover an expanse of flesh greater than a small comet. The bulk of him fills the executive suite where he waits for Lin and Pagliacci to arrive. In this roomful of tanned, white-toothed strangers, Lin's six feet of height is immediately diminished, his pale skin seems to bleach a whiter shade. Papa's hand engulfs his and then lets go; it feels like shaking the paw of a distinguished bear that goes for expensive manicures. 

"See this," Papa says in a voice like stones moving over gravel, pointing to a yellow crystal in a small glass box on the smooth onyx table in front of them. "This _shit_, this miserable material, I have purchased in a miscalculated shipment from a bad place in Russia. Bad, very bad, my boys tell me. Then I speak to Mr. Vicious, and he says you are like that Greek king, your hand, it turns shit into gold. You can do that for me, eh? You turn this shit into gold?" 

Lin recognises the yellow substance as a block of strike, a designer drug not easily available on the street. Laid out in readiness on the table beside the crystal are the tools of his trade, from laser 'scope to micro-reader; he kneels in front of the low table on the seat-pads, as though he was about to have a meal in a traditional restaurant, and works without speaking, without urgency. When he takes his eye away from the lens of the 'scope he has to blink twice before the features of the anxious, eager Pagliacci swim into focus behind the monolith of his Papa's shoulders. 

"Vicious-sama has had people killed for producing material of this quality," Lin says, truthfully. "But since then we have found that it can be treated to boost it up to street standard." 

"Japanese standard or American standard?" Papa grunts. 

"Mars standard." 

"I like this friend you have," Papa says to Pagliacci, who winks at Lin when Papa is not looking. 

***** 

"Mars drugs are higher quality," Lin explains to Pagliacci, as they walk towards Red Dragon headquarters. "America has good designer drugs, but the standard of their mainstream productions has fallen since the last century. They found it difficult to compete with the Amsterdam-Toyko coalition." 

"But Red Dragon is not complete head and shoulders in the drug business, no?" 

"No, that is true." 

"Only surprising that you are working here," Pagliacci shrugs. 

Pagliacci's tongue is pink from a massive tumbler of strawberry bubble tea; the lurid colour of the drink clashes with his blue-tinged grey suit, yet the effect of the fat tumbler in his hand seems to draw even more mascara'ed and kohl-lined and heavily-shadowed eyes toward him. The last of Lin's ice-blended coffee lies in a slush at the bottom of the plastic. He stirs it with the straw. 

"Why is it surprising?" 

"I have a friend like you," Pagliacci says, "back home, in Rome. Perhaps he can do half of the things you do. Perhaps less. But he is very well employed, very well paid. He has a car here, a car there, a villa here, a villa there, a country here, a country there..." 

"Yes?" 

"I do not understand, my friend. I do not know why you stay with the Dragons. You do things that this friend of mine says are impossible." 

"There are some people in the Red Dragon who are better than me. I am learning from them..." 

Pagliacci throws up his hands with a great shout of laughter. Pink ice rains down three yards away. 

"Let me get you a new drink," Lin says. 

"Bugger the drink, my friend," Pagliacci says. "Answer the question. I am thirsty for answers. Drink is cheap, talk is dear. That should be the saying. Why do you stay with the Red Dragon?" 

"Honour." 

"Honour! A beautiful word. What does it mean?" 

"You remember the paper dragon," Lin says. 

Pagliacci nods. Three nights ago they wandered into the local Chinatown, and watched a dragon dance - perhaps fifty men and women holding the poles that supported a long red-and-gold dragon, forming a snake-like body that wove in and out of the streets like a conga dance with no end, a snake chasing its tail beneath a sky full of fireworks and hope. 

"The dance is a beautiful thing and there is a pride for each of the people who dance it, because they are part of a great thing," Lin says. "There is not much money in it, no. And when the city sees the dance, it cannot see the people below the dragon; it only sees that the dragon and the dance are beautiful things. So the dancers know they will never be seen, and their individual skill will never be known." 

"Such a pity," Pagliacci said. "I am sure some of the girls in that dance were of fine and beautiful form." 

"There is only the honour and the pride," Lin says, "the knowledge that, although you cannot see it, you are doing something to be proud of. Something with honour. And if one person decided that he did not want to dance any more, and left, how would the dragon dance, if there was no one else skilled enough to dance in his place?" 

Pagliacci nods his head, claps his long, clever hands like a dove beating its wings, and puts his arm around Lin's neck to pull him into a headlock. It is a rough and affectionate gesture, reserved only for good friends and brothers. 

"You have a reason for everything," he tells Lin. "If you were commanded by your Red Dragon to kill a schoolbus full of children I think you would give me such a good reason that I would first weep, then follow you with a loaded gun." 

"I do not think that will happen," Lin says. 

"Something like it, then," Pagliacci says. "Something equally terrible or pointless, something you can see no reason for doing except that you were told to. What would you say to me, then?" 

"Think of the dragon dance again. Sometimes one person in the dance must perform an step that seems to him to be of no use, to be ridiculous even, dangerous, wasteful. But if he did not do it, then the dragon would not leap, the dance would no longer be beautiful, the other people would miss a step or be confused and then the entire dragon would collapse." 

Pagliacci leaps upon a stone bench (they are passing a park) and applauds, whistling and clapping and stamping his feet. Lin stands below him and gazes up with concern into the healthy brown face as Pagliacci shouts, "Bravo! Bravo, my friend, bravo indeed! Buy me a drink, damn you, I've had enough of your talk for one day, how you defeat me so!" 

Lin sees a familiar building nearby. He has never entered it, but the antics of his friend have begun to infect him with their reckless disregard of conventional behaviour. He buys two plump packets of soymilk-grass-jelly, suspended by a raffia string, a straw sticking out of the open end, from a vendor on the street. Now Pagliacci waits in the lobby of the office, sucking with interest on the fat straw of one packet, while Lin bluffs his way straight-faced through a maze of receptionists until he finds himself standing, smiling, the packet in one hand, in front of her desk, watching the surprise spread like a glow across her face, drop light in a kiss on his cheek. Around them the tapping of keyboards, the clack of high heels and the rustle of paperwork diffuse into another kingdom, a blank area on a map labeled Other People's Lives. 

***** 

"What's that?" 

Lin is brushing his teeth. He says, "What?" between the foam, decides this is a bad idea, spits in the sink and rinses his mouth in a mouthful of water. The metal taste of the pipe remains on his tongue after he steps out of the bathroom. It reminds him disquietingly of blood. 

"That," Mei says. She lifts the small plastic packet, waves it at him. "I thought I _told_ you about bringing work home." 

"That's not work." 

"What is it?" 

She is from a middle-class background; she has an office job, a degree in management-engineering, a mother staying with an aunt near her own apartment; she has probably never held a packet of strike, or grass, or coke, before this. 

"For Pagliacci's father." 

"Oh, poor thing," she says, turning the packet over. "It looks like some really nasty medication." 

Lin keeps his tongue between his teeth to prevent telling her that Pagliacci's father is not a nice old man doddering away in some Milan resort, that the yellow stuff is bound for the streets of New York and Nichigawa, that it does not cure diabetes or arthritis or Alzheimer's, and that he would like her to wash her hands after putting it down even though it is triple-sealed and air-locked. He decides that one action is substitute enough for a thousand words, and gently takes the packet from her, tucking it back into the pocket of his coat. 

"It's about time the Red Dragon revised the company dress policy," she says, running her hand along the long coat that Lin only wears on his more sinister outings; the fine gold braid, the wide European collar, the tassel at the shoulders. "But if you don't wear it then you'll look like a Yakuza instead. There's no winning, is there?" 

This is part of her campaign, a small, subtle pressure that has been increasing inch by creeping inch, of late. There is hardly any part of it he can complain of; it is only a feeling he gets, in between the innocent sentences fallen from her small pink lips, that perhaps, maybe, hypothetically, he might consider a life different from the one that he is bound to. He remembers Pagliacci's questions, the stone bench in the park; he closes his eyes and sees the paper dragon dancing in the streets of Chinatown. 

"Lin?" 

***** 

He opens his eyes. He is in Vicious-sama's office. He remembers the assignment. There was no real need for the alliance with Pagliacci's Papa, no real need for the old man to come to Mars, nor for their agents to go to Rome. There was never a need for anything from Pagliacci's Papa, except his death, and the death of Pagliacci, and of his brothers, and of their entire clan. We need this, Vicious says (as though Lin has ever needed an explanation to obey his orders), to pitch the Earth mafias further into chaos. They must not know that the Red Dragon is responsible; they only have to know that there is a hole in the hierachy, in the black market commerce, in the command; the rest of the planet will do its own backstabbing and finger-pointing, will tear itself to pieces. There only needs to be chaos on Earth for those on Mars to smile, shake their heads, ascend, a bright phoenix rising from the ashes... 

He has realised that from now on there can be no more space for anything else. None for the magnetic charm and white-flashing smile of a buoyant friend; none for idle conversations on the streets of Mars; none for a girl's shoes beside his door, her coat on his hook, her hand on his face. He is aware now that the dragon is there, that it does not care about those people who do not dance beneath its red-and-gold scales; that, one day, if ordered to bring hurt upon them - that strange, confusing step, that wasteful effort whose importance is not for him to question - he will hurt them in a terrible manner, much more terrible than if they were strangers who had nothing better to expect of him in their lives. 

Sitting in the office now, he feels the mask come over his face completely, and it is hard to feel that it will ever leave again. He cannot see the future, but he can imagine it. There is a page he will come to where he closes Pagliacci's unseeing eyes, weighs them down with two coins that he brings with him when the bullets have stopped flying and the room is heavy with smoke and silence. There is a page, later or earlier (he cannot decide), where a delivery man stops at the door of her house (that he has never entered) and hands a box to her (in actuality it is her housemate who receives the box on her behalf; and Lin cannot know that her housemate is Julia, but perhaps this is a good thing), and immediately behind that page is one where she knocks on the door of his apartment until the landlord arrives to tell her that he left without a forwarding address. 

There is a page where he is buying a new phone, moving into a new flat, hefting a new gun in his hand, distilling a more potent new drug into a canister for crystallization, sitting alone at a bar again (but never the bar where he met her, where the memory-ghosts of Spike and Julia hover forever in an eternal, frozen semi-happiness). Perhaps Shin still plays pool there; perhaps Mei will go there, and fall in love with Shin, and he will slip in behind the door as the service is going on, hope that somehow they will feel that he wishes them well. Perhaps there will be a happy ending for her. 

Rising now to his feet to join the rest of the group, running his mind through the weapons that might be available, there is a feeling of strings falling away, of a single hook in his heart pulling at him, a single bond tightening. It is strong and it is made of a thousand ordinary strings; of father, of mother, of sister and brother, lover and friend, wife and child, gods and idols; it is that which always remains when the dust has fallen from the heavy blow of the ultimate decision, burnt into the skin of his back, dancing with fire-lit eyes on a greater plane. 

This is love, he thinks; no in between. 

All or nothing. 

* * *

Footnote: If anyone has studied _Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait_ in Lit class, can you please explain to me what it's about?? 


	7. Epilogue

_ Because I love this scene. This entire bit is a spoiler for Jupiter Jazz II (Session 13). If you've watched it, you'll probably complain that this is a much toned-down version of events. I like toned-down. Life is toned-down. _

  
**

Boy Alone :: Epilogue 

**

_Do not go gentle into that good night.   
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. _   
--Dylan Thomas 

A rooftop. Three ships. A circle in the centre, perhaps a landing-pad for an unwieldy 'chopper. Smoke and the smell, faint, of nitrates. 

Lin thinks, well, at least the explosives were put together flawlessly. 

The woman/man in grey points her/his gun at Vicious-sama, who stares at her/him, his cold eyes seeing another face from another time, lit by a different sun... How many ghosts do you collect in your lifetime? Lin moves to a sitting position, wincing as his body asserts the damage done to it. Sweat over his left eyebrow, trickling down, matting his eyelashes, blinding him in one eye; when he wipes it away it is sticky, thick, the fresh red of a new wound. 

And always the gun is there, pointed at Vicious-sama. 

_"There is nothing there to believe," Vicious-sama says, "nor is there a need to believe..."_

There is a need, Lin thinks; there is always a need. In that moment he understands that Vicious is no longer entirely of the Dragon; that the Vans' suspicions were correct. Even Vicious had said: 

_"If you want to survive, you must betray me at times."_

But for so long the concept of Vicious and the Red Dragon has been one and the same: protect one, thus protecting the other. Lin stands, and, in his confusion, is certain of two things that he lists down as he moves, almost without realising the actions of his own body, towards Vicious and the woman/man in grey, speaking of a time and place he never knew, their voices and eyes gone to ice and ash, standing with the space of a bullet's-flight between them: 

1. His last instructions from the Dragon were to protect Vicious.   
2. There is a reason for everything. 

And if is for him to step in front of Vicious as the gun goes off, to feel the explosion all the way through arm and shoulder and ribs, to feel the crack in that ankle which he falls awkwardly on, to have the dust smarting in his eyes and the dying of the light in both vision and awareness - if this is part of everything, then there is a reason for it. 

And it is never his place to know the reason. 

* * *

Footnotes:   
1. I couldn't find a single good reason why Lin would want to step in front of a bullet instead of cleanly shooting Gren's gun hand right after the explosion and saving them ALL a lot of trouble. Maybe his brains got addled from that knock he got after the bomb blew.   
2. In JJI (Session 12), the Van guy who instructed Lin to 'go with Vicious' is apparently acting independently of his other two mates (one of them turns to him and says his name in a rather surprised and indignant tone). I'm going to assume that guy _knows_ Vicious is going bad, and expected something to happen to Lin, and maybe provided for it as well. (Yeah, I want a sequel with Lin in it, _really_ bad).   
3. And for the last effing time, people don't die within two seconds of a single pistol wound in the left arm / rib. As Mr. White said to Mr. Orange, "Next to the kneecap, the gut is the most painful area a guy can get shot in, but it takes ages to die from it." In the scene, you can see Lin sort of diving sideways so that the only place the bullet could go was in his ribs or lower - Gren was aiming at Vicious's _feet_ prior to that. I don't know if he could have dragged himself to a hospital or something after that, and if he survived the Dragons don't know it (Shin and Vicious, in the last session, refer briefly to him in the past tense), I'm just very sure that he didn't die before the airfight. And you know, extra time, extra hope.   
4. Hell, the footnotes are longer than the story. 

And finally thanks for reading. 'Night all. 


End file.
